Take Me Home
by siobhane
Summary: Xu offers Seifer a kinder end than he deserves. [Phoenix Rising]
The bar is a dirty, dingy place that smells of stale smoke, mold and vaguely of vomit. The walls are covered in advertisements for bottom shelf liquor and tasteless velvet paintings of chocobos playing poker. Seifer has picked the sorriest place in all of Balamb and it suits him just fine.

A taxidermied seagull guards over the beer taps, its beak frozen in an eternal but silent cry, and pale wings stretch toward the sky. One beady eye is fixed upon Seifer as he lifts a glass of the bar's cheapest Gyshal liquor to his lips. It's his fourth in less than an hour, and he doesn't plan to stop any time soon. Restraint was never his strongest quality, and he has no reason to change now.

The only other customer in the place sits at the other end of the bar, his face weathered and leathery from days and years spent aboard a fishing boat and his back is bent from hard labor. It is a fate that awaits Seifer if he lives that long.

Like Seifer, the man has no interest in anything but the drink. That, too, suits Seifer fine. He has not come here for the company.

He is on his fifth drink when the click of high heels against worn linoleum alerts him to a new arrival. She slips onto the barstool beside him, her lithe, trim figure swathed in Galbadian Soldier blue. His list of people he never wants to see again is long, but she is enemy number one, the devil incarnate, and he knows why she's here.

"You're either really brave or really stupid to show your face in town, Almasy," she says. "My money's on stupid."

"Never claimed to be particularly smart," he mutters and downs the rest of his drink. He signals the bartender, who fills his glass to the brim this time. "I hear you put a bounty out on my head."

"I didn't put the bounty out," she says. "I couldn't care less what happens to you. You could rot to death in some Centran ruin for all I care."

It doesn't much matter to Seifer who was responsible for the bounty. He will wind up imprisoned or dead before sunrise. He harbors no illusions he can best her. Maybe two years ago, when he was still strong and in shape he might have offered a challenge, but idleness and alcohol have left him little more than a walking bag of bones.

And she is a deadly, merciless predator. Even dressed up like a Galbadian streetwalker, with her four inch heels and her cherry red lipstick, he doesn't stand a chance.

"How much is it now?" he wonders. "Eight?"

"Ten million," she says. "It's ridiculous, but Cid will do anything to get you back."

Seifer snorts and swallows half his drink in one go. "If I turn myself in, do I get the money?"

"Real funny, Almasy," she says. "You don't expect me to believe you'll come quietly."

Seifer is quite drunk now but all he wants is more. It is the only thing that will quiet the demons for more than five minutes, and he spends his days fighting the urge to drown in it.

It isn't guilt that drives him to drink himself to oblivion but what _she_ left behind. She is dead and gone, yet she lives like some malicious parasite in his gut and feeds on what little is left of his sanity. He is more broken now that he ever imagined he could be and there is nothing left of his boyhood dreams. She has stolen every one of them from him and made a mockery of everything he could have become.

Xu watches him when he fails to answer. She orders a drink and shifts toward him on the barstool, legs crossed like the lady she isn't and never will be.

"I'm tired," he admits.

"Maybe you should come home."

"Fuckin' place was never home," he says. "I didn't belong there. You said so yourself. I wasn't meant to be a SeeD or a leader or any other thing those assholes tried to make me."

Xu is not sympathetic but she sips her drink and stares, her eyes as watchful as a hawk. He is just prey to her, just another notch on her belt, another name on a long list of souls she will eventually send to hell.

"You wanna kill me, go ahead," he says as he stares into his glass. "If you don't, I'll do it myself eventually."

"Who said I wanted you dead?"

"Everyone wants me dead," he says.

"Maybe I'm not interested in that."

"Then why the hell are you here?"

"I have my reasons," she says. "None of which have anything to do with you."

This is utter bullshit. He is the only reason she is here. But Seifer is too drunk to debate it.

"SeeD missions so few and far between you've taken up hooking to pay the bills?"

"Eat me," Xu says. "I look nice."

Seifer will never admit it to her face, but it's true. If he's ever seen her out of uniform before, he can't recall it. Her hair is longer than it used to be and it is curled in a way that flatters her heart-shaped face. The dress is stylishly low cut without being too revealing, and the heels show off her legs and delicate ankles.

"Blow me first and I'll consider it."

Xu snorts and orders him another drink. "I'm just sooo impressed by your wit, Almasy. Tell me, when was the last time you showered?"

She has a point. It's been a few days and he doubts that a dip in the ocean counts as a bath.

"Probably about the last time you got laid."

"You know, you're cute until you open your mouth."

"Ditto," he says as he raises his glass. He is surprised when she lifts hers too. "You're lucky I'm not the least bit attracted to you. Although, I suppose I could tolerate you better if I taped your mouth shut."

"Ditto," she agrees. "I find you equally repulsive."

But there it is. Whether it's desperation or the alcohol talking or just his old habit of chasing after a challenge, in this moment, she is attractive to him in the basest and crudest of ways.

An hour later, they stumble out of the bar and into the rain, and Seifer can barely see straight. The harbor beyond is a blur of bad lighting and ship masts against a dark, stormy sky. Xu's hair is soaked in an instant, and her dress clings to her skin and reveals curves Seifer never knew she had.

She wears a blade under her skirt, strapped to her thigh. Seifer knows it's for him if he resists, but he follows anyway, down a dark alley, past trash cans and stacked wooden pallets because she tells him it's a short cut to the hotel.

He knows better.

She is and always will be the quintessential SeeD: an angel of mercy and death and she has been sent to bring him home. She is everything they wanted Seifer to be and everything he might have become if they'd ever managed to break him the way Ultimecia broke him.

But not even Xu can cut him that deeply.

He does not resist when she pushes him back against a wall. Raindrops pelt their heads and shoulders with a brisk cadence that is almost painful. Overhead lightning splits the sky and he sees himself reflected in her dark, savage eyes. There is no humanity left in her and Seifer wonders if anyone suspects. They call him a monster, but he sees something he recognizes in her eyes and knows she is so much worse than he will ever be.

She lives for this. She loves it the way Seifer loves alcohol. It is an addiction and just like Seifer, she was hooked from the first taste.

She presses herself against him, committed to the ruse he saw through the moment she walked into the bar. She should have known better than to think she could deceive him with a pair of heels and a pretty dress.

"Tell me how you want this to go," she murmurs.

The blade is cold against his throat.

She stares up at him, a hunger in her eyes that resonates in the darkest parts of Seifer's soul. He is not afraid of death and this is a kinder end than he deserves.

"Kiss me goodbye," he says. "Then take me home."

* * *

Notes: Partially inspired by the Cure's "Want."


End file.
